Hybrid treatment verification based on prompt gamma rays and fast neutrons: multivariate modelling for proton range determination

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Robust and fast in vivo treatment verification is expected to increase the clinical efficacy of proton therapy. The combined detection of prompt gamma rays and neutrons has recently been proposed for this purpose and shown to increase the monitoring accuracy. However, the potential of this technique is not fully exploited yet since the proton range reconstruction relies only on a simple landmark of the particle production distributions. Here, we apply machine learning based feature selection and multivariate modelling to improve the range reconstruction accuracy of the system in an exemplary lung cancer case in silico. We show that the mean reconstruction error of this technique is reduced by 30%–50% to a root mean squared error per spot of 0.4, 1.0, and 1.9 mm for pencil beam scanning spot intensities of 108, 107, and 106 initial protons, respectively. The best model performance is reached when combining distribution features of both gamma rays and neutrons. This confirms the advantage of hybrid gamma/neutron imaging over a single-particle approach in the presented setup and increases the potential of this system to be applied clinically for proton therapy treatment verification.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number1295157
JournalFrontiers in physics
Volume11
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-7017-3738/work/152546057

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

Keywords

  • fast neutron, machine learning, multivariate modelling, prompt gamma ray, proton therapy, treatment verification